Plans to ban schools in Lancashire from serving unstunned halal meat have been put on hold pending a legal challenge by local Muslim leaders.

Lancashire county council voted to introduce the ban in October, with the Conservative leader of the council, Geoff Driver, describing the practice of killing animals without stunning them first as “abhorrent”.

Lancashire currently supplies 27 schools with unstunned halal meat, catering for up to 12,000 children who are served 1.2m meals a year. The ban would have come into effect at the beginning of the new school term in January.

Lancashire Council of Mosques has announced that it is seeking a judicial review of the ban, claiming the council did not adequately consult over the decision.

Abdul Hamid Qureshi, the organisation’s CEO, told the Guardian that he was limited in what he could say for legal reasons, but added: “We do not think the county council followed the right processes, or [sought to find out] the impact the ban would have on community cohesion and equality.”

In a statement responding to the announcement, Driver said the council would continue to supply halal meat under the terms of the current contract until the legal dispute was resolved. Following a council decision there are three months in which any party can apply for a judicial review.

Speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, Driver said: “If it is felt that we haven’t consulted appropriately before we made the decision we will do that because we clearly don’t want to either break the law or cause the county council any unnecessary expenditure.”

Lancashire Council of Muslims had previously called for a boycott of school meals following the ban, saying the contracts would fail to provide halal meat that met their criteria. They said the issue had been “politicised unnecessarily” and the ban would only serve to “increase Islamophobia and antisemitism”.

The debate over halal school meals in Lancashire has previously been jumped on by far-right groups, with Paul Golding, the head of Britain First, tweeting about the proposed ban before the council vote in October.

UK law requires farm animals to be stunned before slaughter, but provides a religious exemption for Jews and Muslims. More than 80% of halal meat in the UK is pre-stunned. Instead of a single defined standard for halal meat in the UK, a range of accreditation agencies inspect and accredit firms that produce meat that is described as halal.